Page 21

Chapter

Seventeen

T hierry walked around the front room at Sebastian’s house making hmmming noises. Then he hit up the dining room. He touched things. He nodded some.

Then he headed upstairs.

“I thought you said this guy was good,” Law murmured.

“He is!” Iago checked off stuff on his clipboard. “We’ve worked with him a lot. Online or on the phone.”

“He seems like a nut.”

“All mediums seem a little nuts.” Colton grabbed his cane in a better grip and headed upstairs. His damn leg was so sore. Christ, he was on his last one, for sure. His last leg.

Ugh.

He clomped up the stairs, Law following him, because as interesting as Thierry was, as far as the show was concerned, Colton was the main event. Though he was thinking about bringing on another investigator. He was getting too damn old for some of this.

He’d talk to Gent about it.

Gent would tell him he was nuts, but why not expand their horizons?

“Okay, so this is where the axe was?” Thierry was asking Mason when they got upstairs.

“Yes.” Mason sounded as unhappy as Xander had been when Colton had gone to check on him at lunch. And Mason wasn’t terrified of ghosts like Xander said he was.

But Colton had to admit, Mason had a reason to be wigged out. That whole alpha murderer wanting to attack Iago with an axe thing had to weigh on a guy.

“Yes. I’m glad you took it out of here. It was only making matters worse. Enflaming an already agitated spirit.”

“So how do we make it safe?” Colton had found that outright asking how to get rid of a ghost could provoke an attack. And they didn’t need that. They needed a peaceful handover of power.

“Well, we need to find out what happened. So, I need to start asking the right questions.”

“Right.” Colton knew what Thierry meant. They knew about the murders. The who, pretty much, and the when and how. But the why was still a mystery. What the hell could make a guy kill his friends and one of his friends’ omegas and kids?

So, what was the motive?

“Do we want to roll while you ask?” Law queried.

“Sure.” Thierry’s smile was so…serene. Was anyone really that Zen?

“Hank is here!” Iago called. Hank had made sure Antonia was good with staying with Sebastian while Elliot had to go to a meeting. Sebastian and Xavi were watching them. Apparently, that little girl could get a little grr.

“Cool, send him up!”

Hank trotted up the stairs, panting a little at the top, he’d been in such a hurry. “I think I may have something.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Horus had an omega. Now, according to the mining company records, they didn’t have any kids, unlike what I heard about him staying home to take care of sick ones. But I found a census record for the omega for a couple of years later? And he had a two-year-old child.”

Mason’s eyes went wide. “Huh. So it was Horus’s?”

“Or was it?” Colton pondered that. “What if the omega was sleeping with one of the other alphas?”

A buzzing sound filled the air, and the lights flickered, going out for a moment before snapping back on.

“Was Abraham sleeping around on Jeremiah?” Iago asked, and Thierry shook his head.

“This feels like a happy home to me. I don’t sense distrust.”

Colton almost argued, but then again, it sort of made sense.

People had been living in this house happily almost two hundred years.

Obviously, this hadn’t been a home of horrors, of misery, because the Belles would have sold long ago.

They would have gone and lived somewhere bigger than Hot Springs Junction.

It had to have been Sebastian’s unhappiness, being pregnant alone, trying to raise a baby alone and then, when Abby hit the age of the youngest murdered child?

Boom.

It was a perfect storm of stress for the spirits who lived in the house.

“Okay, I have a question, right?” Mason asked. “Seriously, this Horus guy, he lived for quite a while. Hell, he died in his fifties. Why is he here?”

Everyone looked to Thierry like he was just going to be able to answer.

Thierry shrugged and smirked. “It’s a good question. Horus, are you here? Are you the one who was here?”

Mason scowled at Thierry. “I know full well, he was the one who was fucking here.”

“We are rolling,” singsonged Law.

“Bleep me out,” Mason snarled back. “I’m serious. I know who was here. I know who was trying to get me to do something awful, and it wasn’t going to happen. Do you hear me, you son of a bitch? It wasn’t going to happen!”

The air temperature in the room dropped so quick that it was dizzying, and suddenly he could see everyone’s breath. Colton made sure to blow out a long breath so that people could see on camera. This was going to be an amazing show. “Man, someone didn’t like that.”

“No. No, someone didn’t, and that is an exceptional question.” Thierry closed his eyes, lifted his chin. “Why are you here? Why did you kill the children? Why did you kill Jeremiah?”

Hank had the EVP reader in his hand, recording, Mason was running the EMF, and Colton found himself in the odd position of just hanging there waiting for anything else to happen.

Thierry took a deep breath. “I’m sensing an immense amount of fury, but underneath it? It’s driven by guilt.”

“Because that doesn’t make perfect sense,” Mason muttered under his breath. “For God’s sake, give us something we can use.”

Thierry’s eyes flashed an odd color for a moment, like the eye shine of a wild animal at night. “You want something to use, alpha ,” he spat out in a deep, growling voice. “I gave you an axe.”

Mason tilted his head. “Oh, I don’t think so. Why don’t you just put your dick back in your pants, cowboy?”

Colton blinked, staring from Mason, who was really fairly easygoing as far as intense alphas went, and Thierry, who was obviously possessed by a ghost.

It seemed to him as if they had a situation.

The problem was, it was a really, really, really good footage situation, and if he did something to screw it up, Law and Gent might just castrate him.

“They deserved it. Lousy cheats, the bunch of them.” Thierry snarled, and Colton blinked.

“This was over a game of cards? You killed three little children over a card game?”

Thierry curled his lip. “I killed the witnesses, I killed one whore, and I killed three alphas who were too stupid to understand they had a wolf in their midst. Eventually, she would have had them all.”

Colton was absolutely one hundred percent over his head on this, and thank goodness for Hank who spoke up.

“Listen, Horus. I’m sorry. That your omega was unfaithful. That Lazarus found pleasure in the arms of another alpha. That had to hurt, and it was wrong of Josephine to sleep with him, but everyone else was an innocent party here.”

Thierry turned and roared at Hank. “There are no innocent parties here!” Pictures rattled on the walls and a couple of knickknacks jumped off a shelf and shattered.

“Nonsense.” Colton had had enough. “My daughter. My Abby, she’s innocent here. Absolutely so. And so are me and Sebastian both. As far as our love affair goes, we are at no fault here. I didn’t do him wrong, he didn’t do me wrong, and our little girl is innocent.”

“For now,” Thierry said. “But are you sure he always will be true to you, your precious omega? Are you sure he hasn’t found succor in the arms of another. Maybe one of my descendants will seduce him. Take him and fill him with seed that you and your broken self can’t.”

Colton rolled his eyes. His leg might have been hurt, but God knew his prick wasn’t.

The fact was that he really had outgrown that whole penis measuring nonsense.

Sebastian had waited for him for a long time.

Sebastian was in love with him, and he was in love with Sebastian, and they had some shit to work out, but fidelity wasn’t one of the problems. “Really? You can tell you’re sort of backwater, Horus.

My leg isn’t the best, but I’m better than you. ”

Another roar came from Thierry, who he hoped to fuck wasn’t going to charge at him. Because he couldn’t hurt Thierry to get to the spirit possessing him right now. Medium or not, no one signed up for that.

“What he said,” Mason snapped. “You’re so fucking puny that you have to use someone else to do your freaking dirty work.”

“Whoa,” Iago whispered, watching with huge, wide eyes.

“I know, right?” Law was panning, trying to catch all the action while trying not to jerk at each new wild thing, he was sure. Keep it smooth was Law’s first rule.

The whole place seemed to shimmy, and that was a little scary, but then sparks seemed to fly out from Thierry’s hair, which was standing on end, and from his fingertips, and he screamed.

“No! You will not hurt these people! You will go now, Horus Marken! You will leave this place! I call upon the other spirits to help me drive you out!”

The lights flickered one more time, and then there was a sound that could have been straight out of a 1990s mummy movie, like it was a special effect. Like a soul leaving the room with a roar.

And then it was quiet, the old chandelier in the hall the only sound, squeaking as it swayed. Well, that and their harsh breathing.

Then Law broke the silence. “Holy shit.”

Colton forced himself to chuckle at the camera. “Well, that escalated quickly.” He turned to Thierry, catching the guy as he stumbled. “Thierry, are you okay?”

Theirry glanced up at him, his eyes back to the slate gray sort of color they were naturally, his face pale as milk. “I could use a hamburger and a chocolate shake.”

That had him barking out a laugh, because he was expecting tofu or tea or something.

“There’s a food truck out by the park on weekdays,” Mason said. “They have burgers and stuff. Closer than the hotel.”

“Sounds great. Iago, why don’t you use Thierry’s rental and take him? We’ll shut it down, then meet you and take food up to the folks at the hotel for a change.” He knew Sebastian would want to hear them go over everything and watch the playback.

Mason snorted. “Yeah, I imagine that bunch would hang us by our toes if we didn’t wait for them to get to the nitty-gritty of all this.”

“You know it.” Law shut down the camera, then started for the downstairs, where the brain center was set up. They needed to check all the equipment and unplug and make it safe if they had to move fast when they came back.

It had been a wild ride.

And they had a lot to talk about.